


Cycles of Return

by Swiftlet (SphinxTheRiddle)



Series: Dryden the Fateless [1]
Category: Kingdoms of Amalur
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Rare Pair, Romance, Slow Burn, Snippets, a romance in parts, in which i get attached to the most random characters and ship them with my oc, random collection, self-indulgent fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-16
Updated: 2016-10-20
Packaged: 2018-05-07 01:01:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5437634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SphinxTheRiddle/pseuds/Swiftlet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She does not know what calls her back to the grayed fisherman of the Mere.<br/>He has always known better than to ask.</p><p>Fateless One (Dryden) x Enconeg Holn</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Cyclical

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Their bond was as cyclical as the phases of the moon; waxing and waning, coming and going, all at the whims of a fateless warrior's wanderlust and an old sea captain's devotion.

Cyclical  
  
He had always known she would come back.  
  
An odd premonition to hold about a stranger, but nigh on forty years at the mercy of the ocean made a man wise to such things. Enconeg Holn, like all Varani, was a son of the water, and like all children of the element of foresight, he had inklings and could read the signs in the world. Such signs had persisted since the month before she had first entered his life, when he’d lost a game of Knuckles for the first time in years, the bone dice rolling snake eyes. Within that same month, the Ettin of the mere had stolen his Imelda's grave charm, and after that, he had fallen prey to the crooning of a blighted leanashe.  
  
‘Twas in that muddled thralldom she had first found him, her viper-eyes glowing a feral yellow-green in the shaded twilight of Ettinmere’s watery domain. She had come striding out of the mists with all the predatory grace of a barghest, her very presence commanding a sort of rapt attention. He had seen such a mien on the best captains to traverse the Icebrine Coast, had recognized a kindred spirit roiling within her. Had he not been so enraptured by the leanashe, he might’ve thought to question why the very essence of the marsh seemed to crackle around her.  
  
Instead, they’d spoken few words. Dellach, she had stated, the word loaded with meaning. Further on, he had replied, waving her off deeper into the Ettinmere. He had not seen her again until the dark hours of the next morn, when she had knocked once upon his door and silently paid to use the bedroll out by the shed. Though it would take her breaking him free of the leanashe’s mesmerization to realize it, the fact was that she had known from the moment she’d first seen him that he was enraptured. Fate had led her to him, he liked to believe, but the lack thereof had brought her back.  
  
Just as it did now, her whims carrying her through the fog, wanderlust and something more sparking in her eyes as she laid them upon him again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fair warning for those of you who are like me and never read the tags: This is going to be an extremely self-indulgent story! There's no logical reason for Enconeg to latch onto my brain, let alone for Dryden to take a shine to him; but when a character knows what they want, I have to swing with the punches.
> 
> For those of you who stick around, I hope you come to enjoy their story as much as I do. :)


	2. Return

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For all he is a subject to her whims, Enconeg never fears her absence.

Return

It was never a question of whether or not she would come back—she always came back.

At first it was simple necessity; she had little coin to spare for an inn or a room at the local tavern, and he had offered her the bedroll he kept for travelers free of charge. He owed her that much. And perhaps, after so long in solitude, the intermittent company was a private joy to him.

But soon enough, her travels took her farther and farther from Dalentarth and the lonely shores of Ettinmere. It would be some time before she spoke to him of her adventuring, but his early life as a pirate and privateer had taught Enconeg what to look for. Sometimes, she returned in a whorl of summer wildflowers and the seasalt scent of the Tywili coast. Other times, she came upon his doorstep trailing the red-rock dust of Detyre in her wake, her fair skin deeply tanned and sun-freckled. The worst times were when he found her collapsed on the bedroll in a bloody heap, smelling of jungle humidity and war, souvenirs from the battlegrounds of Klurikon.

Yet no matter how far she roamed, she always returned, serpentine eyes glowing yellow-green in the gloam of the Mere. Looking back, Enconeg realizes he never once asked her why, never questioned it. Her presence was somehow intuitive, like a weave of Fate wrapped ‘round his cerebrum.

_Fateless, they call her_. The thought still sent shivers of chill dread and warm acknowledgment down his spine. For she comes back, this huntress of gloaming, as she always means to.


	3. Glimpse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first time he sees her naked, dancing through the waterways like a Frostbreak mermaid, is also the first crack in a wall he'd not even realized existed.

Glimpse

The first time Enconeg saw her bare was entirely an accident.

She had arrived under the cover of night, as she was wont to do, fleeing the tangles in the Weave that they swore she was no longer bound by. It was strange to her, this constant sense of returning; in truth, she preferred the sunbaked canyons of Detyre, the stark and lonely beauty calling forth some inexplicable thing within her gut. Yet for all that, she forever found herself trekking the long road back to Dalentarth, deep into the bowels of the primordial Sidhe. At the time, she could not explain the whys and wherefores, quietly stricken by the relief she felt every time Holn’s Lake came into view.

Even in her other life, home was an…uncomfortable concept. She contented herself with the excuse of Summer Court liaising and a free place to lay her head at night — all things that were at least half true.

But even in retrospect, that first naked dive into the lake on an early morn was uncharacteristically impulsive. She had exchanged her trollhide armor the night before for soft peasant’s garb, intent on removing the gore and oiling the desert-scorched leather—the first sign of something deliciously amiss, for she never did such things out in the open. By the time she awoke, her travel-ached body was misted in dew, a pleasantly deceptive precursor to midday marsh humidity. She found herself drowsed, languorous, stretching her muscles with feline laziness.

In that just-woken haze, she stripped bare. Gooseflesh prickled along her skin upon contact with the cool air, little shivers tracing down her spine. Every sense was heightened, her feet luxuriating in the feel of deep green mosses between her toes as she padded softly to the jump point behind Enconeg’s gear shack. With a final twist to remove the tie from her hair, Dryden leapt, a perfect dive into the darkly cool waters of the Mere.

It was the splash that first alerted Enconeg—a sudden, quick exclamation in the morning silence. He had to shake himself from the instinctive flare of alarm, pushing back dancing images of tentacled leanashes gleaming grey and pale, like corpses below the surface of the water. He had seen the bedroll beside the gear shack; he knew Dryden was near. Even so, uncertain in the morning fog, the graying fisherman crept to waters edge, the fear still a trickle behind his ears. Over-reacting, that’s what he was, but he had to be sure.

And there she was, stroking the byways of the lake, like some Frostbreak mermaid out of the old Varani legends. Viper-eyes gleamed up at him in quiet observation once she came back ‘round, the first non-predatory expression he had ever seen on her face.

He would remember that expression years down the line—the moment she became tangible in a time of magic, in a land of the ethereal.


	4. Cracks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Years from now, he would look back on these interactions as the moments in which their courtship truly began.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to **serenbach** and **defloriennes** for the unexpected, but no less kind, reviews~.
> 
> Thanks as well to those of you who have left kudos. You always make my day~.

The first time she converses with him follows too closely on the tails of that early morning glimpse at nakedness.

Her stay in the Mere had been longer than usual, and her mood more spontaneous. More than once in the days following her arrival, he’d awoken to splashes in the morning, padded footsteps along the docks at night. She seemed to all but embody the land and the water around her, and he could see her impression in every byway.

But for all the signs in front of him, he did not expect her to approach.

Upon a single clear morning, she cornered him as he mended fishing nets. He had been close enough to the jump point to mistake her footsteps for another watery excursion. Instead, silence fell with no splash to follow; and when he turned in wary curiosity, she was there.

“Enconeg,” she greeted, her eyes bright.

And though he bore more gray hairs than she did years, though he’d been married to his Imelda longer than she had been alive, the best response Enconeg’s brain could muster was an abrupt, “Aye.”

The answer seemed to amuse the feral-eyed woman, her quiet chuckles sounding like drumbeats against his ears. She’d a surprisingly soft voice, low timbre’d in the peace of the morning, reminding Enconeg of purring barghests. It was a voice made for secluded conversations in the lowlight of a tavern, for two people and mugs of mulled mead beside the hearth. For— _For discretion_ , he reminded himself quickly. This one had all the bearing of a commander, yes, but also a spymaster. And he’d seen her cleaning the blood off of her chakrams before; Enconeg was no fool.

Yet that age-earned insight was not enough to entirely off-put him. He was drawn to this glow-eyed woman, no matter how his instincts warned of danger in her every move. Some part of his mind likened the magnetism to the draw of a leanashe, equal parts desire and magick. Enconeg would have none of that.

He’d been a pirate in his youth. Just because one could not see the shoals did not mean they didn’t exist—prevention of sinking was paramount.

And yet…he was an old man. What did he have to lose if he crashed headlong into this indefinable _something_ growing between them?

A quiet hum brought Enconeg back to the present moment. He met the woman’s gaze, noting that her eyes had lost their mischievous glow. Angling her head, she stared somewhere over his head, as if unable to meet his eyes.

“It occurs to me that I have not thanked you for your hospitality,” she said.

‘Twas an unexpected turn in topic, and Enconeg blinked it away. “No thanks were needed, Wanderer. After what you’ve done for me…”

“You mean the leanashe.” At his nod, she turned her eyes back to his face, the corners of her mouth pulling down. “Enconeg, I did not save you. I killed a monster for the promise of coin. ‘Tis not the same, and unworthy of your gratitude.”

Though the claim was somewhat pricking, it was not unexpected. In those first encounters, she’d seemed an aloof woman despite the magnetism. Quiet, cold, calculative—those were the words that’d first come to mind when she had dispelled the leanashe’s enthrallment. He had been embarrassed at the time, his pride wounded by his own foolishness, his confrontation with loneliness. He had all but snapped at her to hunt the blighted creature which had bewitched him, promising a reward if she could manage to return the ring the creature had kept from him.

She’d not failed the assignment. The unholy wailing of the leanashe had gurgled and ended as quickly as it had begun, and the wanderer had returned with his wedding ring, striding along the docks as if she owned the place.

And yet…

“Perhaps, Wanderer. But didn’t you also hunt the Ettin and return my Imelda’s grave charm to me?”

That remembrance struck her, though one would not have realized unless they’d been in her company long enough. All movement, even breathing, ceased for the barest second as she slowly blinked recognition. Then the glow was back in those yellow-green irises of hers, the expression intense as she eyed him. Yes, she _had_ gone out of her way to help the fisherman. Without the promise of payment. For something of more personal significance than mere dispelling and hunting. She felt her hands curl into fists as she folded her arms behind her back, caught.

Another crack in the surface, Enconeg would remember years later. A burgeoning attachment.

Sensing her discomfort, the graying fisherman sighed theatrically and turned back to his nets. “Well, the fish won’t catch themselves, I suppose.”

He felt the slow touch of her gaze upon his back as he feigned total interest in his work. Caught a soft, near inaudible release of her breath as her footsteps padded past him towards the jump point behind the shack. He caught her eyes from his peripheral, stilling at the measured stare.

“You may call me Dryden, Enconeg.”

And then she was gone, leaping into the lake.


End file.
